Youth sports is fun. At least, it's more fun to watch that I would have guessed. But it does get a little pricey. To combat this, Corrie signed me up to be an assistant coach. At least that's what she thought. But, signing up as a coach erases the price to that family, so that's more than enough motivation.
When I went to one of the "assistant coach" meetings, they said: Be sure to be here for the tryouts, so you can keep track of players for the draft a few days later, and then don'tmiss the draft, and soon we'll get your team name and cap designs.
My raised eyebrows said, Umm, what? Running a practice in the first few weeks was more stressful than coaching the games; I can say that with experiences as the head-coach, draft-maven, and team-namer.
Originally I went with the name Tyrants. I was going togo with a t-rex theme, and it sounded like it fit the times, anyway. I was going to go with a a black and white, cursive, uplifting script team name across the chest, white letters on black shirt, so we could have black pants (score one for non-white pants). But this was nixed on account of having to steal the images and jersey designs from established teams, and beyond a novel I'm writing, there are no major league, minor league, or college team sporting that name.
After a long discussion with Cass, and going back and forth a few times between a few other names, I made the executive decision and chose the Surf, as in: the Long Beach Surf. I went with an LA soccer team from the late 70s for the cresting wave logo, but really, I was interested in a cyan (sky blue) cap with the neon green interlocking LB cap. I thought the cap would stand out.
The jersey folks told me they changed the hat plan, but thought it would work. They settled on:
This coaching deal has been something new. I got used to different titles: chef, mister...and now I'm called "coach" pretty regularly by a certain tiny group of parents and kids.
Go Surf!